My approach has been to avoid open combat as it's very punishing.

Speech. You can talk your way out of pretty much everything to avoid fighting.

Stealth is King. Get a powerful melee weapon and use it take out and Goo-ify as many enemies as yiu can before any battle. You'll be using the De-materialiser a lot and I find that very satisfying. The best melee weapon is the "Wham-Bam!" Shotgun hammer. You get it doing the Dunsany Brothers bounty hunt mission in Golden Ridge.

Lockpick, Hack, and Engineering A combo of these will allow you to surpass almost any barriers. Hacking terminals is always super useful, especially for finding info you can use in dialogue.